Traditional radio architecture brings many challenges to vehicle designers. The vehicle's complex head unit must accommodate multiple tuners, manage heat dissipation, and receive multiple cables from the antennas.

In addition, the received analog signals pick up noise as they travel from the antenna to the head unit of the vehicle. Finally, baseband processing uses single purpose hardware, requiring separate designs to support multiple worldwide radio standards.

With Maxim's remote tuner solution, the RF to Bits tuners are now located in a quieter environment close to the antenna to minimize noise. Meanwhile, the digital outputs of the tuners are serialized using Maxim’s gigabit multimedia serial link (GMSL) serializer and deserializer (SerDes) onto a single low-cost coax cable. Power for the remote tuner solution is also delivered on this single cable.

Not only does this improve radio performance, but it also reduces the weight of the vehicle to provide better mileage. Removing all tuners from the head unit saves space and reduces both system complexity and heat dissipation in the head unit. In a 4-channel radio, for example, 4W of power can be removed from the head unit.

In addition, the MAX2175 allows the baseband processing to be done in software on an automotive System-on-Chip (SoC), such as the Renesas Electronics R-Car H3 SoC. This software defined radio (SDR) approach enables flexible implementations by eliminating the need for a dedicated baseband processor. By simply changing the software, now any worldwide radio standard can be supported using the MAX2175.